i bought myself a cake
i bought myself a bottle of wine
i mixed quiet and noise like paint but it never felt like colour
i sent you a letter
please write back

don't think I don't notice everything about you
digging your heels into the ooze that used to be snow
waiting for me to stop mourning summer like I lost it
I can't help that we're our past
I can't help that you're her name

this night tastes like spring, but in January I know better
would you place a palm over my mouth
and wait by my side for the ice to erode

and then when there's nothing, will you let me breathe again?
you could keep my winter soul safe
I see it in
your eyes like
the goodbye I'm waiting for, but
I saw it in
his eyes
too

dreams where I'm standing in front of myself
taking in hazel eyes, pigeon toed feet
she is tall but I am taller
we each roll our shoulders back, grimace
lick our dry lips, scoop thin hair off our face
I pull the first punch to prove that I'm quick
It hurts but it feels amazing because catharsis is the process of releasing,
and therefore providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions

but then there's you? together we used to
enter refuge into careful arms
your name, your name, your name

alone, I am a person without a country
the captain of a ghost ship, skirting water, shuddering
amidst the noise, cringing under this bright light

six months, six months, six months

overlook rooftops, three-quarters sky
she’s white like insomnia, overshadowed by
snow, gusting the gaps in the buildings
gutting gasps out of air, breathlessly,
you remember fog and the way it left the ocean
the way it left the ocean to kiss your skin
how much it hurts to be landlocked is more
than the fear of no return instilled by water ever was,
watching tiny bodies waddle through furious winds

noses runny and red, arms fat with fabric, reaching for doors to perform
an act of disappearing

and while you stare at a single hooded figure
putting foot in front of foot, crossing the courtyard to warmth
the sky will use the privacy to perform an act of transformation
she will become cerulean, and once again you can't breathe

I did not have a dream but instead dreamt
of eating a lobster, crustacean salt of sea
I cracked open your arms to taste your meat
all salty warm butter you shattered
so easily, like my hands were meant

to break, or you were meant to be broken or we were
meant 
for each other
it was love I think it was love it was



a dream? I woke to insatiable itch
my skin flaking, then hardening over
I explored my arm with my tongue
and it tasted of salt crustacean
and the flesh wouldn't move it was
rock
maybe this shell will protect my pink insides
maybe this shell is my saviour but then
why can I barely walk

I felt very strong I felt protected, I turned
to demonstrate, to preform an act of magic
to make you disappear, to eclipse you
with myself

but you weren’t in my bed, you woke

alone, safely tucked away

love, promise me the summer

and your arms
your fragile bones

winter bites at me harder than anything with teeth ever could
at me, ever biting, winter's teeth are harder than anything
I am freezing I
am in the middle of a clearing of
fresh snow, no feet have
walked here no feet walk here, here
no feet walk winter home at night she walks alone
like I do, when I make my way into empty rooms
empty rooms like I make my way in to sit
rooms like my way and one sealed envelope-

frost clings to the walls making me claustrophobic taking air
zapped like a last breath, winter takes, cold cautions you leave
or die here, empty rooms and only the envelope, waiting
thinking maybe, it could contain anything
thinking I could contain anything, maybe-

and off the outer walls, icicles crack under their own weight, time shredding days into darker pieces, slivers so thin I barely believed they could get any smaller until you told me we
still had a ways to go
and something within me fell over, then
fell over like icicles
cracking
and I knew then I wasn't maybe containing
then I knew anything I could contain maybe wasn't
and feet that indented snow froze still, the footprints I'd
made sealed over in ice and refused to change
all that fresh snow, I was Schrodinger's Cat, I was walking around
unaware at the time, my feet just filled footprints already made, already frozen, already mine

turning to my neighbors, I ask if they’re awake
just as our clenched fists 
find a body in our river
I thought I could trust what I held in my hands
but this history of ours ruins everything we touch
I want you to believe my fingers scrape at nothing
when I reach into my past
because all I’ve got so far
is dirt under my fingernails

I can angle my head in such a way that the plains of
my face echo the imprint of my ancestors, who
didn’t hold arms out but inward, to pray

they were settlers in Israel, colonials in Canada
cutting irreversible fissures
they prized their knives, winking an eye
and smiling upward at a God that wasn’t there